Colchuck Peak; May 10, 2008

Panorama from Colchuck lake. Aasgard pass : Dragontail Peak (8840') : Colchuck glacier : Colchuck Peak (8705'). (Editor's note: wow, colchuck looks dwarfed compared to dragontail at this angle.)
Lucas and I had some celebrating to do. After long weeks for both of us, we had a few highlights. I finished teaching my first class (Admittedly it was team taught with my boss but she gave me flexibility in organization and doing most of the teaching; we'll have to wait to see what the students thought) and Lucas had his last few lab meeting before he moves on to bigger (and better?) things. For weather concerns, we picked something pretty far east and agreed on Colchuck Peak. It's a pretty massive mountain and I've always been intrigued by Mark's "3000' glissade" stories. What better than doing the 3000' on skis. The plan was to make camp Fri afternoon, ski Saturday (Colchuck and others things?), maybe get a run in on Sunday, Ski out to the car Sun late morning, weather permitting of course. After my last class on Friday AM, I came home and packed everything into the car. After his lab meeting Lucas packed his crap as fast as possible and we were on our way, although not as early as ideal. Leaving the car at about 7:00 we had to boot up the road (no access because of snow) about 1 mile to the TH and then another mile or two because the snow was only patchy. We finally started skinning and made decent time until it got dark and we lost the skin tracks we were following. We mustered on and soon (i.e. 10:30) were at Colchuck lake for camp.

It was one before we got to sleep so we had a casual morning and headed up the Colchuck glacier. Clouds came and went, but by the time we made it atop the glacier, we were greeted with biting winds and it soon became socked in. We booted to the summit (left photo) and then returned to our skis. We got to ski 2500' from there - strait back to camp on soft and heavy snow, which made for good skiing (Lucas eating it up on the right). With the weather deteriorating, we aborted the plan for additional runs and an extra night at camp. We had a couple celebratory PBRs for the summit, our time out, and our nice run, and then headed out.

The ski/boot out was the worst part. All gear was soaked (i.e. lots of extra weight) and we had full packs. Trying to navigate through the terrain was a lesson in survival skiing. I finally gave up about .75 miles from the TH and put the skis on my back.

Crystal Lake Basin Ski tour

Sunday was the day to go out. Not only was it supposed to have the best weather for the weekend there was an omen. On Saturday, I went to buy ski poles at a great local shop up the street, but it was closed. there was a sign (scribbles on paper is a better way to describe it) that said that they were closed due to "unavoidable circumstances." Below that it read: "You should be out skiing anyway." Together I understood that to mean, "go away stupid! Take advantage of the snow, we are!" Good advice. My 'bent in all direction poles' still remain basket-less. c'est la vie. So we were off to ski on Sunday. I just went along with whatever lucas wanted to do since I didn't think that I could convince him to seriously attempt Shuksan in these conditions. So off to Crystal we were.

4 am alarm (aka, cussing after a night of drinking). 5 am departure. 7 am skiing at the deserted Crystal ski area. It was warm and the snow already soft and wet. We skinned up and had a second breakfast on a table outside of the lodge on top of the mountain. We made an upward traverse of the headwall under the high campbell chair and gained the ridge. Past the throne (1) we ended up on top of Silver King (2), which would be our high point for the tour (Right, me pic'd on the throne with silver king in background). We rested with an early first lunch and prepped for our first decent. We headed away from the ski area down into the crystal lake basin. The snow was soft and wet, after all, it is the spring. The decent was great, with soft snow through some nice, open glades.

At the bottom of the descent (3) we had a brief second lunch and schemed our plan. Unfortunately, neither of us had been to the area. I wanted to get around to the opposite side of crystal peak to try to find better conditions. We found a ledge system to try to go around, and the ledge system quickly cliffed out. We retreated as fast as we could. Our second illadvised plan involved taking a crazy line to try to gain the next ridge en route to Crystal Peak and we eventually arrived at the ridge (red dot). There was definitely a better way (purple dot), but that would have involved backtracking! After getting on the ridge and being able to breathe again we made the easy ascent up to Crystal peak (4; site of panorama). The clouds were thinning and Rainier was coming out. The day was getting better.

From here, we followed the ridge to two peaks (5, unnamed?; 6, Chinook; both pic'd on right, above from our decent into the basin). We backtracked a tad on the ridge, continued, and met up with other skin tracks that made the much more logical line to the ridge. After an 'easy' boot up class three rock (not as easy in AT/ski boots) to the true summit of the unnamed peak, we just followed the ridgeline to chinook peak (Lucas pic'd in bad lighting with Rainier). Our route was 'doable', but traversing to the SE face around the rock outcropping would have allowed a straight shot up a snowfield. We rested atop chinook peak a long while since we were done climbing and the weather/scenery was spectacular. Both of us waterless, we melted some snow in the sunshine. We wanted ski the wall to crystal lake but couldn't find a way. So we we skied down NE to hit skin tracks on the backside of the ridge, which led us to sourdough pass (7) and back out to the ski area (8). A final decent down silver basin and we were back at the car. Per the broken altimeter: 5000' gain, unknown mileage. Great skiing, great day.